Quality Discussion HD/SD (Offtopic posts from Shana II Ep 1)
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http://www.mbs.jp/pgm/timetable/daily/20071011.shtml (25:25 if you don't know where to look.) |
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Techinically, I think Gundam00 is crapping all over everything else. I watched the raw yesterday, WOW. |
The xvid encode looks fine, but this show is definitely not in HD. You might've gotten a fake raw dude. Or maybe it was upscaled by the airing station, I dunno.
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Jesus christ, so many people talking about things they don't understand. I guess they didn't even bother to download and look, they just had a peek at some sites and knew. What really matters in terms of visual quality is the quality of the master - NOT merely the final airing resolution.
Look at this frame. Does this look like an upscale to you? http://www.earth-alliance.org/zhenta...this_in_SD.png Okay. Now, we see how an upscale really looks like. I take this frame and reduce it to SD (640x360). Keep in mind that almost no SD encodes exist which could reach this quality level. http://www.earth-alliance.org/zhenta...downscaled.png And finally, we re-upsize it again http://www.earth-alliance.org/zhenta...ized_again.png As you see, especially if you open the frames in both tabs, is how the upscale loses definition and precision and gains a blurry edge. And this is why "fake upscales" don't really do look better. If I had the nerve, I'd pick a SD encode, upscale it, and then show how SD would look at 1280x720. Ugly. It's true that several parts - especially those from season 1 - are only normal SD. They are INDEED upscales. However, the NEW parts are not. They have a much higher visual clarity which becomes rather obvious when watched. If you were correct, then the xvid and the h264 should look almost the same, at least in terms of sharpness and detail. Because after all, the h264 is only a puny upscale, right? Fine. Download both and see for yourself. And I can't believe that I was stupid enough to waste 15 minutes on doing all this. |
I believe SD resoltion has 480 lines, not 320. And with a slight sharpen, the difference is gone in the upsized-again image. Perhaps there's a better frame to use, there's not much detail in the one you picked in the first place.
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How about you download both versions (the SD xvid and HD mkv), watch both of them, and then compare? Before you comment blindly?
If you then seriously don't see a difference (in the _new_ parts, not the repeats), then come again. |
WOah... thats scary... theres actually a huge difference
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Yes, there is.
The thing is that what REALLY counts is whether the _original anime material_ is handled as HD when it's mastered and converted to a digital representation. THAT is what "HD anime" really is, not (just) what resolution it's eventually aired in. This is a common misconception, and doubly annoying when people start to criticize your hi-res release by claiming it's a mere upscale. If the _original material_ is HD, then qualified encoders can graft HD quality out of the airing, even if _the airing_ is not native HD. Original material HD ---> Station airs in HD ---> win! Original material HD ---> Station airs in normal res ---> win! Still HD quality attainable (this is what we have) Original material SD ---> Station airs in HD ---> Station upscale level, "better" but not full HD quality Original material SD ---> Station airs in normal res ---> The normal lower quality. |
ima feel like a retard but what subbing group are u from?
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Look bro, I don't mean to be picky here... but how the hell do you find that missing info? Magic? The first thing anyone learns when dealing with image manipulation is that downscaling discards information, which cannot then be recovered. It doesn't matter if the original image is 720p or 1080p or 94857201p - if it's downscaled and aired in SD, and an upscaled SD is what's aired, how do you figure you can pull HD out of that? |
We're getting very technical here, maybe a kind mod can move this thread to the Tech board for discussion.
For me, HD is a description of an attainable visual quality level. SD is the visual quality level we've been used to for ages - what's been airing in the past, on TV, and on DVD. HD goes significantly beyond that. What we have in this case is a 720x480 airing of a show which has clearly been mastered in HD resolution. This is fairly rare still and results in a quality which goes WAY BEYOND what we're used to for "normal" SD releases. Why? Because of the amount of detail retained. "Normal" SD releases offer much less of this detail, they are technically _also_ aired in 720x480, but they are also _captured_ in this format, adding all scanning errors, encoding artifacts and other forms of visual degradation to the result. HD-origin releases are then _downscaled_ to 720x480, this results in a totally different visual experience, because the problems from the SD capture are generally superseded by _downsize_ of a superior-quality original. Technically, you're right of course - you can't "reinvent" the quality lost in the downsize. But you can keep things perfectly in check in a slight upscale (line thickness, clean gradients etc) to rescue most of the visual experience. If you have a SD-captured, SD-aired source, you can't. Here, "upscales" multiply all errors you had from the SD-capture, the picture looks blurry, and sharpening it back up doesn't yield much effect. In practical terms, what matters more for the video encoder is not the AIRING resolution, but rather the CAPTURE resolution. And in return, the raw providers choose their resolutions exactly on the visual impression, NOT on the airing resolution. So, if you decree that a "genuine" HD in your definition is only HD-mastered, HD-aired - fine, then this release is not. But you're doing the fans a great disservice, because even you will have to admit that the visual experience is _fundamentally_ different. |
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That's a very eloquent escape, but I'm glad you admitted you were wrong. HD this sub is not. And you really shouldn't claim it is, either. More and more fansub groups are doing this it seems over the past year or so and boy is it annoying. You shouldnt be using a technical term with a very CLEAR definition and replacing it with your own fuzzy one. HD has one definition and one definition only. |
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Look, I could encode blankclip() in 1280x720 and call it HD. And I'd be perfectly right. HD is nothing more than a set of predefined resolutions. So much for your "one definition". What is important for the viewer is not which technical processing a video went through, the viewer wants to know how the result looks. The _source_ is clearly HD. The encoded result is _also_ HD. That's what counts. I note that you still weasel out of my question to compare the _real_ SD release (namely the XviD avi) with the h264 MKV one. The difference is noticeable for everyone. And to put it bluntly, for them, the distinction I use is much more reasonable than yours. |
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I wasnt arguing that your "HD" sub looked better than the SD release or vice-versa. I said it wasn't HD, to which you agreed in your last post. The distinction that you use is totally WRONG. You are redefining HD to "some arbitrary level of quality to my eyes and mind" Is it that hard to admit you were wrong? I don't want to be a jerk or anything, but you keep arguing, even after you admitted as much in your post before this one. And it DOES matter what processing an image went through. Because with a downscale, quality is lost and information is thrown out the door. It shocks me that you admit to much but still claim that HD is whatever you define it to be, some sort of "experience" percieved by the user. |
This reminds me of Kyoto Animation's answer (on the Kanon Prelude DVD) to the question of "What's different about producing a show in HD?" The answer was, of course, "you use bigger paper". I think the real difference people will notice when comparing season one of Shana with season two is that the lines look much, much thiner now -- on the "SD" version, some are only a pixel or two wide. Same applies to the CG and so on -- there's just a lot more artwork detail there, even when broadcast at the very same resolution. That's obviously because the artists had a bigger canvas in mind when they drew/animated it.
So, for that reason, I think Mentar's right when he says the apparent difference is obvious, even to the un-trained eye (the filters used help restore some of the original detail, despite it being interpolated). But of course, those maintaining that it isn't HD are also correct. Perhaps the whole thing could be solved by simply removing the "HD" label entirely, and only putting the resolution (which, of course, is what happened). All in all, I think it's pretty self-evident that encoders should only provide high-res encodes if the source material really warrants it (i.e. it looks significantly better than simple software scaling). I say "self-evident", but that doesn't stop countless groups from releasing ugly, blurry, no-better-than-stretching-the-player "HD" releases every week. We see the same problem with people providing super-high-res scans of really low-lpi print material -- it looks like crap, and the resolution isn't helping! This is the sort of education that I think would be most useful, rather than arguing about whether it's "HD", "quasi-HD", "True HD (tm)" or whatever. Start with "does it not look like blurry crap" first. :heh: (I suppose that's another topic, though...) |
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This is just for the definition issue. If you want to be anal (and for some silly reason you are), so can I. Quote:
What you now so grudgingly admit in a single sentence is that there is a huge quality difference between both versions. How would you label it then? "SD" would be misleading. "Station upscale" is flatly wrong. "HD master station downscale"? The funny thing is that in general I share the resentment of fansub groups eagerly labeling every 1280x720 encode or higher HD. The result should warrant it. But: This release DOES. It's that simple, really. And still, relatively few shows are HD-mastered. They deserved to be labeled as such. |
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What you're basically doing with the capture of the second broadcast is upsizing/filtering it so the end result/visual impression will look better than what 'Fullscreen Mode' in my video player would do. But hey, I bet you can do the very same with an SD source! SD sources may look crappier than HD 'downscaled to SD', but they still won't look as good as HD-produced, HD-aired. |
The squabble is about what the "HV" (or HD) label means really. I'm sure MBS broadcast something at a size of 1280x720, hence the cappers nabbing it at such in most cases (also the station logos are quite, quite clear)
Beyond that it's all guesswork as to what went on behind the scenes, i.e. is it a studio upscale, a station upscale, or what? I'm sure some HD resolution masters are hiding behind the scenes, but what got handed to the station really is anyone's guess. |
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Of course, HD-all-the-way will look better, unless the source itself is trivial. Quote:
I insist that this release offers a visual quality in the mkv version which goes way beyond what anime viewers are usually treated to, and it's way above the SD xvid (even though it's actually a downscale of the same source, resulting in a better-than-normal video). If definition purists say that this isn't what HD is, more power to them (not to say that they can kiss my hairy... :) ). In the meantime I'll keep calling it HD by _my_ category. And I can tell you, I have had no complaints in the channel about the video quality yet. |
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By misuing a term, you may be misleading or confusing people. Secondly... if it's not true HD, why release an 'HD' version? It seems like it's just a waste of space and time to keep and transfer it, when the 'SD' version will give you 90%+ of the same thing. Granted, @ enhancing things, but really, aren't you just kinda... fooling with things to kinda 'fix' what isn't broken in the first place? (arguments about whether fansubbing NEEDs HD encodes belong elsewhere) |
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By the way, I took your image, loaded it into Photoshop, did a bicubic downsample to 720x480 and then upsampled it back up to 1280x720 and there's almost no difference. http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6826/sdhdur2.png Can you give a better example for me to try out? |
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As for the rest: How about you read what I wrote about the whole "HD" thing before you repeat the questions which have been answered by me more than once? zalas: Sure the Air BluRay set had several true HD parts aswell, but many _many_ sequences were not. It caused alot of frustrated uproar by the fans. And if you reserve the "HD" label to only those shows who are absolutely HD in all steps, not many will warrant this description. |
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Now, I give you that if you use a 1280x720 capture/encode of a 720x480 source, you'll often get better image "quality" using the same quality settings. This is why higher image size raws look better than the 720x480 sized ones. However, given a 1280x720 capture of a 720x480 source by some random Japanese guy, who usually don't go as hardcore into encoding as you do, you should be able to squeeze it down to a 720x480 encode with no problems. Try doing an encode at 720x480 and give it as much bitrate or slightly less bitrate as the 1280x720 encode with the same codec. If there are significant differences, then something is wrong with the codec. Quote:
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Of course, there's a limit to how far you can go with this. By rule of thumb, any upscale above factor 1.5 causes this strange look you create when you upscale true SD sources (which are effectively even _lower_ in resolution due to the generally lossy capture, and then often halo-inducing postprocessing). Here, on the other hand, we have a source which captures most of the visual quality of the original. And I believe that you will agree that the impression of the mkv and avi are _significantly_ different. Right? Quote:
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Are we agreed that generally we have the 4 quality levels I outlined above? 1) Mastering HD - Airing HD 2) Mastering HD - Airing SD 3) Mastering SD - Airing HD 4) Mastering SD - Airing SD In this order. For encoder eyes, there's a noticeable step between 3 and 4 (most of the clean fansub encoding raws chosen for SD shows are picked from 3). There is a VERY significant step between 2 and 3, and personally, I'm inclined to start pointing out shows from level 2. If I had known how much time I've wasted here, I'd have said "Hi Quality" and bingo. It's not in the filename either. Here you can first create a genuine "wow" effect visually. And only a minimal amount of shows are really level 1. So how would YOU distinguish between the levels? If at all? |
Jesus, some of you people...
USE YOUR EYES if they still haven't fallen out from years of reading fansub drama on forums. As requested though, FUN WITH PICTURES - all from (one of) the raw(s) so you won't get to have fun questioning Mentar's filtering choices: Originals: 1 2 3 bicubicresize(852,480).bicubicresize(1280,720) (because only *bleep* use image manipulation programs for image manipulation): 1 2 3 I also took the liberty of doing your eyes' job for you: subtract(last, bicubicresize(852,480).bicubicresize(1280,720)): 1 2 3 DOES NOT AIR IN HD my ass. Look at the station logo and the sponsor logos and then come back and say that again. |
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In this manner you're just pandering to leechers' illusion that more and more anime they get are HD. That isn't to say their numbers aren't growing (Jushin Enbu and Gundam 00 are perfect examples of HD-produced-aired-captured anime of this season), but as you say they're in minority and will continue to be for some time, one of the reasons being they're more expensive to produce. However, these days leechers expect a high resolution version of any show that airs. The whiners are extremely annoying out of no good reason. Recently I've worked on Nodame Cantabile and Sumomomomomo. Guess what? The raws were all MentarHD, not true HD, and we got a bunch of leechers whining because, well, we didn't distribute upscales. Now whose fault will that be next time? Or should all groups start releasing MHD? |
Here are the three original images downsampled to 720x480 using a 3-lobed Lanczos filter and then upsampled to 1280x720 using the same:
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7...sized01ul2.png http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7...sized02ox8.png http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7...sized03wu3.png The only real differences I see are in the credits. And yes, I used Photoshop last time because it was convenient. These downsamples and upsamples are done with in-house software for image manipulation that my graphics research lab maintains. Quote:
1. you capture losslessly (lossy captures are obviously the norm, but the lossless image quality is the upper bound) and your resampling is done ideally (most resampling is non-ideal, but a Lanczos filter gives very close results) 2. the station doesn't add any HD stuff like sponsor logos (which often change between episodes and between stations) You see sometimes that 3) is better looking than 4), and that is primarily due to the fact that most cappers in Japan don't know how to encode properly and that fixed macroblock sizes obviously favor larger image sizes. Any differences between 2), 3) and 4) are miniscule compared to the difference between 1) and the rest. |
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Again, your definition of HD is only one of several, it's not "the" real one. It's a logical and consequential one - and one which doesn't help the majority of anime watchers at all. Quote:
What's your solution? Pretend they don't exist and hiss at those who disagree? |
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*chuckles amusedly* Oh, and just FYI: Actually it's becoming more and more prevalent to release DVDs mildly upscaled (which I don't, but for different reasons). |
Just out of curiosity, but why is your SD encode only 704x400? Aren't you losing about 16% of the resolution? Is it because you wanted a compatible, no-frills, easy-to-view version?
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First screenshot is the unmodified 1280x720. Second screenshot has been downscaled to 704x396 and then upscaled to 1280x720, thus losing any extra detail that would have resulted from the higher resolution. http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9...t201hy5.th.png http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/6...t202mh1.th.png You can see a little detail is lost on the bottle labels and couch buttons, however the majority of the sharpness retained at the expense of a little warping. Avisynth to generate the second image: Spline36Resize(704,396) Lanczos4Resize(1280,720) aWarpSharp(10,1,.5) Now, looking at the credits alone (see TheFluff's post) you can definitely tell this is at least airing at HD resolutions. While watching it, I didn't notice a whole lot of detail that made me think the source master was HD. Because there are decent methods for upscaling, I general consider HD 'good' when there are extra details as opposed to just being sharp. As for whether it is worth releasing a fansub in HD with such a source, I could go either way. Note: I did create an upscale of the original image I'm quoting but the png is 2.7mb and I can't find a place to upload it. X_X |
Compatibility encode. Since we always release 2 versions, we need one for the small computers and standalones. 704x400 (or 396 if you stick with ASP codecs) is a proven size for that.
By the way: Check the Kimikiss raws, from MBS. There's even a 1280x720 version out. Would you say that this is the same kind of upscale like the Shana ones? If not, what's the difference? After all, according to your theory, they're all SD? Off to bed now, will continue this tomorrow. |
Whoops, I missed a posting
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I just can't believe that you are really so blind. Why do you argue against the visible and obvious so much? I don't understand it. Quote:
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That said, I don't think anyone is challenging your skills as an encoder, rather the disingenuous way that things are being labeled. |
Yes clearly there is a difference between shows mastered in HD to those not. I am pretty sure no one but GUTB himself would claim otherwise :3. Personally I myself wouldn't take a show which was mastered in HD, but aired as SD, and use HD resolutions. Why? It is an illusion of what it truly is...a fake. Why not just wait till the actual HD broadcast is out to use HD resolutions? It would make sense, you get the full quality "High Definition experience" then.
If I recall correctly Shana is unfortunately on this horrible fucking "we do the real HD broadcasts 3 weeks later" thing right? So just do the SD releases for now... Why even bother to put out lower quality releases labeled as "HD" now when you could use the better stuff in a few weeks. Which I would assume you plan to do? Keep SD broadcasts as SD. Prease ;-;. Don't waste time on using high resolutions just because the source really is high definition. Use high resolutions when the broadcast is the same. If there were never going to be HD broadcasts of a show I could see how doing a high resolution encode might be warranted. But personally I still see it as a waste, since it's just an illusion of the quality that could be. Of which I assume is the important part here, quarlity :). [This paragraph is for young encoders, if anyone.] Within my own lexicon...I only refer to a show as HD when it is mastered in HD. And I only refer to a raw/capture as HD when both the show is mastered in HD and the broadcast is HD. Anything else using those resolutions, to me, are just high resolution/upscale encodes, but not HD. If the broadcast doesn't match the source...no reason to muck up a confusion by calling it HD in my opinion. This sort of thinking could be used just as well on SD broadcast as HD. They are simply high resolution/upscale encodes, not HD. Which I think is why everyone is jumping on you Mentar. Just because the source really is HD, does the final encode (which was taken from an SD broadcast) really warrant high resolutions? |
You too, Nich? :)
To make it short and sweet, you remember wrong. The show you're referring to is Clannad, not Shana. I can't believe that even YOU join this nonsense chorus. You honestly think I can't tell a SD show from a HD show, old buddy? Wow, thanks, very flattering. Numberofpeoplewhocommentwithouthavingbotheredtoloo k += 1; *shrugs and moves on* Minna, gomen nasai for the confusion. Of course, the release is only SD, but I've rented some trained monkeys to vector and manually repaint all the new parts. Then, I've encoded it at higher res and bitrate to waste precious resources from poor anime fools I managed to mislead with my irresponsible promotional campaign, which is now putting such a unduly pressure on all those brave encoders who deny their fans hi-quality hi-res releases because their dogma says it just CAN'T look better. All those suckers who were goaded into it - had they only stuck with the xvid, they would have had the same quality, but at lower filesize... it's a shame really. Oh, and all those people in the channel and on the boards who said "whoa, looking amazing, so much better" were of course paid by me, of course. I rest my case :) |
I'm probably in the minority in that I watch everything on my LCD TV. It's 720p, which means that anything lower gets upscaled. And frankly, I'd rather trust an experienced encoder to upscale an SD source rather than me fiddle with ffdshow settings or worse, have my TV do it for me, as only the expensive sets have upscaler chipsets worth talking about.
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